Experience Neil Young’s First Performance of “Pardon My Heart” in 50 Years!

Neil Young’s Historic Performance

Neil Young performed “Pardon My Heart” for the first time in 50 years. Check it out below.

Second Fireside Session

On Christmas Day, Young shared a clip of himself performing “Silver and Gold” for the first time in nearly 20 years. When the video cut out at the end, he could be heard saying, “Is this our first fireside meeting?”

Now he’s shared a second fireside session via his website. Introducing the clip, Young wrote: “Hello again guys. There are some pretty casual versions here. This is our second holiday party of the season… Love to you all. Peace.” Click Here to watch this.

The song is taken from Young’s 1975 album Zuma and has only been performed live twice before. He first debuted the track in May 1974 at a surprise late-night concert in New York City. “This is a love song. This is one of the saddest love songs I have ever heard,” he told the crowd at the time. Rolling Stone.

Then, in August of that year, he performed the track live again during the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion tour at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

The song was recorded in June 1974 with Tim Drummond on bass and Crazy Horse rhythm section Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot on backing vocals. After the track was completed, it sat in storage for over a year.

Talking to Rolling Stone in 1974, Young said, “(Joni Mitchell) writes about her relationships much more vividly than I do.” He continued: “I think I’m hiding what I’m talking about even more. I wrote some songs that were as edgy as she was. Songs like “Pardon My Heart”, “Home Fires”, “Love Art Blues”… pretty much all from Homegrown. I never let any of it out. And I probably never will. I think I would be too embarrassed to post them. They are too real.”

Pardon My Heart was released just a few months later on Zuma, but his album Homegrown wasn’t released until 2020 – some 45 years after its completion.

Confirming his release, Young wrote: “I apologize. This Homegrown album should have come to you a couple of years after Harvest. This is the sad side of a romance novel. Damage caused. Heartache. I just couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to move on. So I kept it to myself, hidden in storage, on a shelf, in the back of my mind… but I should have shared it. It’s actually beautiful. That’s why I did it in the first place.

“Sometimes life hurts. You know what I mean,” he added. “This is the one who escaped. Recorded in analog format in 1974 and early 1975 from the original master tapes and restored with love and care by John Hanlon.”

In a five-star review of “Homegrown”, NME shared, “The addictive and rousing title track, which premiered on 1977’s American Stars ‘N Bars with Star of Bethlehem, is also proof that Neil Young always knew how to have fun, but— As with the long-running release of Homegrown, it will always be on his terms.”

In recent years, Young has increasingly pulled songs from his extensive back catalogue. In October, he was joined by Stephen Stills—his former bandmate in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young—to perform their song “Hung Upside Down” for the first time in 57 years.

The stage performance was part of the 2024 Harvest Moon benefit concert in Lake Hughes, California. The event, hosted by Neil Young, saw various famous musicians come together to raise funds.

Then, in September, it was revealed that Young had performed his elusive 1977 song “Hey Babe” live for the first time.

He wrote and released “Hey Babe” with Crazy Horse, Linda Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson as part of his eighth studio album, American Stars ‘N Bars. In the 47 years since its release, the song was only one of two tracks from the record that had never been performed live, along with “Will To Love”.